Social commerce is evolving faster than any other digital sales channel, and Instagram has become one of the most influential platforms shaping this transformation. With built-in shopping features, product tags, Reels and even a fully integrated Amazon shop, Instagram already provides the technical foundation for seamless in-app purchases. Yet despite millions of daily impressions, user interaction remains surprisingly low. The Swipe-Commerce on Instagram concept, developed by Lina Marie Jungbluth and Keanu Gergen, identifies this gap clearly: users scroll through the shop passively, without meaningful engagement. SwipeCommerce aims to change that by creating a shopping experience that is more intuitive, more personalized and far more playful—ultimately unlocking new levels of engagement and conversion.
The Psychology Behind Swiping
Swiping is one of the most natural and intuitive gestures in digital environments. As outlined in the original research, dating apps dominate their market partly because the swipe motion feels effortless and automatic, requiring far less cognitive effort than tapping or clicking. The left-to-right movement mirrors our natural reading direction, making navigation smoother and faster. In e-commerce, this simplicity offers a clear advantage: the quicker users can browse, the less likely they are to drop off. This makes swiping an ideal mechanism for product discovery, driving higher engagement and improving the overall shopping flow.
The Problem With Instagram’s Existing Shop
Although Instagram reaches hundreds of millions of users daily, the integrated Amazon shop currently suffers from low interaction. Users scroll through products without deeper attention, and because the system receives almost no active feedback, personalization remains extremely limited. The result is a generic shopping feed that lacks relevance and inspiration. A significant missed opportunity for both brands and the platform. Without signals such as likes, dislikes or deeper engagement, Instagram cannot refine recommendations, and users do not feel meaningfully guided or understood.
SwipeCommerce as an Intuitive Solution
SwipeCommerce introduces a completely new interaction pattern. As proposed in the concept, users would browse products using clear, intuitive gestures. Swiping right to show interest, swiping left to reject a product and double-tapping to add it directly to the cart. Every swipe becomes valuable data that feeds into a personalized “For You” shopping feed. This makes the experience more dynamic, more tailored and much more interactive. Users make quicker buying decisions, feel more connected to the content they see and engage with products instead of merely scrolling past them.
Gamification as a Motivational Engine
One of the most powerful components of the SwipeCommerce concept is its gamified point system. Users earn points for swiping, saving items or spending more time in the shop. Instead of traditional discounts — which often reduce merchant margin — the system rewards engagement with early access, exclusive recommendations, badges and even ranking lists among friends or at national level. This gamification approach increases platform loyalty, boosts activity and enhances the emotional bond users develop with the shopping experience, all without sacrificing revenue.
Technical Implementation and Platform Potential
The proposed implementation unfolds in three phases. First, Instagram introduces basic swipe gestures and point tracking. Then, ranking systems and badges enhance the competitive and social aspect of shopping. Finally, the full integration merges swipe data with the existing shop, allowing the algorithm to update product feeds in real time. Companies gain access to valuable insights, seeing how users respond to items instantly and authentically. This foundation could be extended easily to other Meta platforms, including Facebook or Threads, turning SwipeCommerce into a multi-platform social shopping standard.
A Massive Revenue Opportunity
The revenue potential behind SwipeCommerce is remarkable. If 76 million users swiped just ten times per day, the result would be 760 million daily interactions. Even a slight boost in conversion rates would translate into several million potential buyers daily. With an average basket value of around €40, this could produce daily sales in the hundreds of millions. And Instagram’s commission alone would reach millions per day. Over a full year, this scales to multi-billion-dollar revenue potential. These numbers underscore that SwipeCommerce is not a gimmick but a commercially powerful model capable of reshaping social commerce entirely.
Outro: About the Authors
The SwipeCommerce concept was developed by Lina Marie Jungbluth and Keanu Gergen, Marketing Management students who combine consumer psychology, digital platform strategy and market research into a forward-thinking vision for the future of social commerce. Their work shows how a single swipe can increase engagement, accelerate buying decisions and push Instagram’s shopping ecosystem into a new era of personalization and interactivity.